Welcome, book friends!
If you’d prefer to listen to this book list, you can check out the full episode on The Bookmarks ‘n Blankets Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or listen below.
I invite you over to X (Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram to let me know what you thought of any of the books on my list, what you’re reading this month, or what new releases you are excited to read.
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Ready to dive into summer reading? Whether you’re heading to the beach, lounging by the pool, or soaking up sunshine on your porch, this June TBR list is packed with 12 books that radiate summer vibes. From sun-drenched romances to breezy escapes and heartwarming adventures, there’s a perfect pick for every kind of reader. Grab your sunglasses and let’s turn the page into the season!
12 Summertime Books I Want to Read
Are We There Yet? by Savannah Scott
Genre: Contemporary Romance | Clean Closed-Door Romance
GR Rating: 4.20
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: A vintage VW van. Four friends. A cross-country road trip.
It will be the best adventure of my life, if only I can shake the feelings I have for Cameron.
Cameron Reeves is as gorgeous as his name makes him sound.
He’s about six feet tall, which is the height I always wrote in my ideal man list in my journal. Yes. I have a list of qualities I want in a man. And Cameron ticks all those boxes—except two.
That is, unless you count the fact that I’m a fixture in his life. Cameron probably gives me as much thought as he gives his sofa. It’s there. It’s always been there. Comfortable, reliable, old sofa.
I’ll get over Cameron eventually. Don’t we all get over the hum and rush of our first crush?
If anything, six or seven days cooped up in a van together on a trip across the country should kill any infatuation I have and kill it good.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, so maybe forced proximity works the opposite way. A girl can hope.
That Fine Line by Cindy Steel
Genre: Contemporary Romance | Clean Closed-Door Romance
GR Rating: 4.08
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: All I wanted was a quiet summer on my family’s ranch in Idaho…
I didn’t think that was too much to ask. With my fiancé in California, I was back home for three months to plan my wedding. I had colors to pick, cows to milk, and a wedding dress to squeeze into.
Which was why I didn’t need anybody messing with me.
Especially not the guy who had dedicated his whole life to making mine a joke. The guy who filled my high school locker with frogs and my hot car with cans of tuna. I mean…I always got him back. But not this summer. Things were different now. I was engaged. I had grown up. I would NOT fall victim to Cade’s pranks, teasing, or his manly charms.
If only my dad hadn’t hired the moron to cowboy for him this summer.
Now my childhood enemy is living on our ranch and seems to think we have a score to settle.
And all bets are off.
A Novel Proposal by Denise Hunter
Genre: Contemporary Romance | Clean Closed-Door Romance
GR Rating: 4.07
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: When novelist Sadie Goodwin is forced to stop writing westerns and charged with penning a contemporary romance novel to rescue her lackluster sales, there’s only one tiny problem: She’s never been in love.
Desperate to salvage her career, Sadie begins devouring romance novels. Knowing she must devote herself to this confounding genre, she accepts an invitation to hole up at her friend’s beach duplex for the summer. Where better to witness love in bloom than on the beautiful North Carolina shore?
However, once ensconced in the charming ocean-front home with her sweet maltipoo Rio, she finds many ways to procrastinate. First there’s the beach, right outside her backdoor, with all its interesting visitors (research). Then there’s the free library she decides to build and set up by the back deck (She has to do something with all those romance novels). To say nothing of Sam Ford, the grumpy neighbor on the other side of the duplex . . . who she can’t seem to stop annoying.
A social butterfly by nature, Sadie soon gets to know all the beach regulars—sunbathers, walkers, and surfers alike. The free books draw a crowd right up to the house for nice little book chats, which further irritates her reclusive neighbor, to break up her “writing.” But things take an unexpected turn when Sadie opens a recently-placed novel to find a secret compartment—and tucked inside is a beautiful engagement ring. To whom does the ring belong? Sadie is convinced she needs to find the owner and save the man’s proposal from certain doom.
She draws a reluctant Sam into the project, and slowly their connection begins to develop. Are these weird fluttery feelings the first stirrings of love? Has Sadie managed to stumble upon the very subject about which she must write—and wouldn’t Sam make the perfect alpha hero?
Will Sadie find the ring’s rightful owner? And will she manage to pen a career-saving romance novel by summer’s end?
First Love, Second Draft by Becca Kinzer
Genre: Christian Fiction | Contemporary Romance
GR Rating: 3.55
Read more on GoodReads.
GR Description: Rom-com writer Gracie Parker hasn’t written a bestseller since she and her husband, a major league baseball star, divorced five years ago. On thin ice with her publisher—and with a looming deadline—Gracie couldn’t have picked a worse time for a painful injury that has her flat on her back. At this point, she’d accept help from anybody . . . except her first love and ex-husband, Noah Parker.
The baseball season has just ended in massive disappointment for Noah. He’s facing the stark reality that he gave up everything for a career that’s let him down, and that it might be too late to get back the one person he should’ve held on to. So when Gracie’s nephew calls, saying Gracie’s looking for a tenant for her next-door rental, it feels like it’s meant to be.
All Gracie cares about is turning in her manuscript on time, which is directly at odds with Noah’s attempts to win her back, even if she is slightly charmed by his kindness. But can people ever really change? Then Noah throws a curveball that could give Gracie the extension she needs, but it will mean working directly with Noah, something she’s not sure she can face. With no other choice, and everything on the line, Gracie must decide if it is too late for a second draft of their own love story.
The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
Genre: Contemporary Fiction | Romance
GR Rating: 4.02
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: After tragedy strikes, Hollis Shaw gathers four friends from different stages in her life to spend an unforgettable weekend on Nantucket.
Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper.
So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.
The husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it hap- pens, has many secrets.
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
GR Rating: 4.19
Read more on GoodReads.
GR Description: In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface, they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end, they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.
From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.
Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children, and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend. . . .
For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart… and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Genre: Contemporary Romance with Magical Realism
GR Rating: 4.06
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café.
It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about.
As the truth about her past slowly becomes clear, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird will finally be able to take her broken wings and fly.
Live and Let Chai by Bree Baker
Genre: Cozy Mystery
GR Rating: 3.92
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Audible
GR Description: Trouble is brewing in Everly’s new café. Can she bag the culprit?
Life hasn’t been so sweet for Everly Swan over the past couple of years, but now that she is back in her seaside hometown and the proud owner of a little iced tea shop and café right on the beach, things are finally starting to look up–until a curmudgeonly customer turns up dead on the boardwalk. With one of her hallmark glass tea jars lying right next to him and an autopsy that reports poison in his system, it doesn’t look good for Everly or her brand-new business.
As the townspeople of Charm, formerly so welcoming and homey, turn their back on Everly, she fights to dig up clues about who could have had it in for the former town councilman. With a maddeningly handsome detective discouraging her from uncovering leads and a series of anonymous attacks on Everly and her business, it will take everything she’s got to keep this mystery from boiling over.
Beaches, Bungalows & Burglaries by Tonya Kappes
Genre: Cozy Mystery
GR Rating: 3.56
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited and Audible
GR Description: Welcome to Normal, Kentucky~ where nothing is normal.
Mae West, a far cry from the Hollywood actress, has been thrown for a loop. Her plush lifestyle in the big city of New York comes to a screeching halt after the FBI raids her mansion and arrests her husband, Paul West, for a Ponzi scheme that rips people out of millions of dollars.
Mae finds herself homeless, friendless, and penniless. All hope isn’t lost. . .the only thing Mae got to keep that the government didn’t seize is a tourist camp ground, Happy Trails, in Normal, Kentucky and an RV to live in. One problem, Mae’s idea of camping has room service.
By the look of the brochure, Happy Trails has plush Kentucky Bluegrass, a crystal clear lake, a beach chair with her name on it and thoughts of how much money it could bring her after she sells it. Mae figures she’ll take a couple weeks vacation with her toes dipped in the lake. Things aren’t always as they appear. The Kentucky Bluegrass is nothing but dirt and the crystal clue lake is murky with green slime on top.
Mae quickly find out that Happy Trails and the citizens of Normal were also victims of Paul’s schemes, making her lower than tha lake scum in the residents’ eyes. Mae doesn’t think things could get much worse, but as luck would have it, Paul West has escaped from prison and is found dead, murdered, floating in the Happy Trails mucky green lake.
Mae is the number one suspect on Detective Hank Sharp’s short list. After all, Mae has the perfect motive as a kept wife who has been scorned to ashes, embarrassed to death, and seeking revenge.
Time is running out for Mae to prove that she’s innocent and nothing like her husband. If only she could get someone to believe her and talk Detective Sharp into looking at other residents who’ve lost all their savings to Paul’s Ponzie scheme before the curtain is closed on this Hollywood namesake.
Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
GR Rating: 3.41
Read more on GoodReads.
GR Description: None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder?
Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island, every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single friend, Rachel Woolf, is looking to meet her match, whether he’s the tennis pro or someone else’s husband. But even with plenty to gossip about, this season starts out as quietly as any other.
Until a body is discovered, face down off the side of the boardwalk.
Stylish, subversive, and darkly comedic, this is a story of what’s lurking under the surface of picture-perfect lives in a place where everyone has something to hide.
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack
Genre: Mystery & Thriller | Cozy Mystery
GR Rating: 3.47
Read more on GoodReads.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
GR Description: Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies . . . one trip to die for.
All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series―is that too much to ask?
Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life―the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life―Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary rivals, rabid fans, a stalker―and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly―theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatriz Williams
Genre: Mystery | Historical Fiction
GR Rating: 3.71
Read more on GoodReads.
GR Description: 2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America’s most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America’s gilded class–famous for the lavish “summer cottages” of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia “Lucky” Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion’s ruined boathouse.
1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport’s elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she’s hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.
1958: Lucia “Lucky” Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother–the American-born Princess di Conti–fled Mussolini’s Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn’t seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky’s lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion’s old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth…and change everything she thought she knew about her past.
As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever….
Bonus: Falling for Summer Series
This is a multi-author collection, featuring summer romances that are all clean, closed-door – no language and no spice. All books are available on Kindle Unlimited. Learn more here.